I asked her to play to me at last, I was growing so apprehensive, and she went from one divine thing to another for quite an hour, and then at ten o'clock stopped and said a dignified and casual "good-night" leaving me sitting in my chair. I heard twelve and one strike after I too went to bed, no sleep would come, I was reviewing things, and strengthening my courage. Then I got up and hobbled into the salon to get the "Last Poems," the door was open, why I don't know, nor do I know what impelled me to go out into the passage and towards Alathea's room, some powerful magnet seemed to draw me. The carpets are very deep and soft, no noise of footfalls can be heard. I crept near the door and stopped. What was that faint sound? I listened, yes it was a sob. I crept nearer. _Alathea was crying._ A soft continued moaning as of one in resigned distress. I could hardly bear it. I could hardly prevent myself from opening the door and going to her to comfort her. My darling, darling little girl! Flight was my only resource. So I left her to her tears, and returned to my bed, and when I was safely there and could think, a wild sense of triumph and power and satisfaction filled me! The weight, which all the evening her marvelous self-control had been able to make me feel, lifted from my heart, and I rejoiced! Is it possible that the primitive instinct of the joy of conquest could make of me such a brute! _It gave me pleasure to know that my little love suffered!_ The sooner would she belong to me--quite! XXV Marriage is the most turbulent state I could have imagined! Whether or not Alathea and I will ever get the tangle straightened out I am not certain. Now as I write--Saturday afternoon, the ninth of November, 1918--it looks as if we were parted forever, and I am so irritated and angry that as yet I feel no grief. The quarrel all arose from my fault, I suppose. When Alathea came into the sitting-room at about ten o'clock she had blue circles round her eyes, and knowing what caused them I determined to ask her about them and disturb her as much as possible! This was mean of me. "You poor child! You look as if you had been crying all night. I do hope nothing is troubling you?" Her cheeks flushed. "Nothing, thank you." "Your room cannot be properly aired then, or something. I have never seen you looking so wretchedly. I do wish you would be frank with me. Something must have worried you. People don't look like that for nothing." She clasped her hands together. "I hate this talk about me. What does it matter how I look, or am, so long as I do the things I am engaged for?" I shrugged my shoulders. "I suppose it ought not to, but one has a feeling that one hates anyone under one's roof to be unhappy." "I am not unhappy. I mean not more unhappy than I have always had to be."